Update - Fri 20th Dec, 2019 04:00 GMT: Dangen Entertainment's new CEO Dan Stern has published a new statement on the company's website, explaining how Dangen plans to resolve its developer issues and move forward.

Below is Stern's entire statement:

As part of the transition following our statement on restructuring Dangen, I want to provide some clarity regarding open questions about Dangen’s future and how we are moving forward with the developers.

We are finalizing paperwork to complete the company transfer, however already working as the new CEO, it is important to me that we answer the open questions and then move quickly to resolve them.

To that end, I am taking the following steps:

-I have reached out to all developers currently signed with Dangen. All developers will be free to reconsider contracts and decide whether or not they would like to continue forward with Dangen under its new management. Dangen is committed to meeting its developers' needs in every way possible.

-I have also reached out to the developers of Devil Engine and Fight Knight with a clear path toward mutually agreed separation. I hope to resolve these very quickly so all parties can pursue their own goals in the ways they deem best.

-Final payments to the Devil Engine team will be resolved as soon as we have received the invoices.

-In cases where Dangen currently manages store pages for developers with whom we part ways, ownership of those pages will be relinquished to the developers and Dangen’s own access will be removed.

-Branding on Dangen’s own websites will be removed for canceled projects. Dangen will work to make sure the removal process perfectly meets developers' needs.

-Dangen has much improved its withholding tax relief submissions process and we will work in good faith to complete this paperwork in a timely manner. Developers will continue to be paid according to the mutually understood timelines.

-To the developers who are working with us, we are grateful for your trust and we pledge to do our absolute best in publishing your games.

I believe that actions speak louder than words, so I am making this statement now that I am settled in and taking my first steps as CEO. I aim to take these steps quickly and decisively so that Dangen can return with redoubled conviction to fulfilling the commitments it has made to its developer partners.

Dan Stern, CEO

Original Story - Tue 17th Dec, 2019 06:30 GMT: Japan-based indie publisher Dangen Entertainment has made headlines for the past several weeks after the company's CEO Ben Judd was accused of inappropriate behaviour, harassment and bad business practices by an anonymous person (via Medium), who had worked as a liaison between multiple parties and Dangen for many years.

It's now resulted in Judd stepping down from his position, being dismissed as the vice president of the Digital Development Management Agency and departing from the board of BitSummit's organisational committee, JIGA. The interim CEO replacing Judd at Dangen will be Dan Stern.

These allegations made reference to Judd's former partner – a designed named Alex – who referred to the now-former CEO as a "predator" in a series of tweets earlier this year, that "held meetings in strip clubs, exposed himself to people in public, and harassed younger women".

As Judd was in a position of power, the victims involved did not feel they could "speak up" or ask him to stop, without putting their own careers, industry opportunities and connections at risk. GameIndustry.biz also spoke, "directly with 12 sources" who made "various claims" about Judd's poor business conduct and behaviour at work and in social environments.

I've caused a great deal of pain to not only Alex, but my friends, co-workers, and business relations and I am deeply sorry for that. In order to take responsibility and give myself time and space to work on this, I will be stepping away from Dangen and Bitsummit and taking leave from my other industry endeavors. For the foreseeable future, I will be focusing on fixing some of the issues that have come to light as well as spending time with my family.

Dangen co-founder Nayan Ramachandran will also no longer be a full-time employee due to his unprofessional conduct and failure to follow through on promises to developers, although he will stay on as a freelancer and be honoured financially.

One of the game's caught up in this story is the bullet-hell shooter Devil Engine by Protoculture Games. Alongside Sorcerobe (the creator of Fight Knight), both studios verified with GamesIndustry.biz that the original Medium account discussing poor communication, business conduct and mishandling of payments was referencing their companies.

Since revealing this, Protoculture Games has issued the following tweet, stating it no longer has access to Devil Engine (published by Dangen Entertainment) on Nintendo Switch or Steam:

Protoculture no longer has access to "Devil Engine" on Switch/Steam. Players interested in supporting us are unfortunately advised to wait for further updates. We apologize for the delay regarding "Ignition", but we hope we'll have better news for you soon.— DEVIL ENGINE IGNITION (@Protocultgames) December 12, 2019

When he’s not paying off a loan to Tom Nook, Liam likes to report on the latest Nintendo news and admire his library of video games. His favourite Nintendo character used to be a guitar-playing dog, but nowadays he prefers to hang out with Judd the cat.

Oh no, my whole world is shattered now that this guy I’ve never heard of quit his job at some company I’ve never heard of, and that it somehow affects the developer of a game I’ve never heard of. I don’t think I can sleep now.

I'll admit to just reading the headline on this and no more so yes, my mistake. My point still stands in general though - seems to be a common trend where peoples lived are ruined by unsubstantiated allegations - again, clearly not on this occasion so sorry about that.

Seems to be a more common trend of folks hearing about sexual assault allegations and immediately siding with the sexual predators and blaming the victims. For every person who supports a full investigation into every allegation, there are at least five apologists.

> I'll admit to just reading the headline on this and no more

Why do you default to blaming the victim and siding with a potential sexual predator?

@Lordplops Equally do claims get ignored, especially when the offenders are much more powerful than this guy. It basically becomes impossible, even when they claw some attention they get called crazy or a liar because mainstream media wouldn't dare touch people with a certain amount of wealth, because the police won't, either.

@Blizzia ...and are those utterances not the first thing anyone thinks of when you mention phoenix wright?regardless, pretty much all of his fame is capcom-related; he's also who revived bionic commando for a short time

@somebread No, never. The first thing I think about when Phoenix Wright is mentioned is the genius writing, not some random one-liner anybody could've shouted into a halfbaked off-brand microphone in their basement.

Try as might I just cant bring myself to care. Wish this site, and many more, would stick to reporting gaming news and leave this to Twitter etc. Its starting to feel like a cheap tabloid here at times.

@somebread no it is not it is click bait aimed at luring in people with salacious details. The fact that an arse worked for a gaming company does not make it it gaming news in the same way that 'teen gunman owns CoD' does not make a shooting gaming news. This is just blindly jumping on the bandwagon that sites like Kotaku have created with the aim of attracting the angry liberals.

Please read the darn article before responding to it. Because some people are having trouble with that, though:

The former CEO clearly admits to causing harm and is stepping down. There are no mentions of any charges being filed. Another employee is being let-go as full-time staff but will remain on the company payroll as a freelancer. Dangan has also been having issues with falling through on its commitments with game dev companies, to the point where one of those studios can’t access their own game right now.

@Belatarr I’m pretty sure that Patron is a troll. If the way that they sound like no actual liberal feminist that I’ve ever met didn’t give it away for me (and as a liberal feminist myself I’ve met a few in my life) then the way that they spell ‘women’ differently every time they use the word does. I don’t think anyone even uses any of those other spellings outside of Hollywood Wicca these days, lol.

There’s also the fact that, as you said, their posts never actually make sense.

glad to see the "innocent until proven guilty by anyone but themselves, their family, a load of companies and gaming industry people, etc." crowd have arrived, where would we be without you guys@bluemage1989 i feel like "CEO" is a bit more important than "worked at," in addition to the fact that, again, a company being unable to access a game (i.e.: support is impossible for it) is kind of pertinent information

@Belatarr It means that I consider myself a feminist as well as someone who falls on the liberal side of the political spectrum (mind you, liberal in the US (where I am, and I know most people on this site are not) is very different than a liberal in the UK (https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32qbkt/eli5_the_difference_between_american_liberal_and/). I agree with a lot of what other American liberals believe in regards to racial/gender/etc equality, preserving the environment, economic reform, educational reform, taxation, etc. It's easier for me to sum my views up in that way when referencing someone who seems to be trying to parody that sort of person than it is for me to go down the list of every single issue and how I feel about them, especially since my views do hew stereotypically to the far left side of the American political political spectrum (what can I say, I'm boring).

Going, again, from how people define the terms in the US: yes, you can be a conservative feminist. My extended family is pretty evenly split between liberals and conservatives, but there are those who consider themselves feminists on both sides.

Nobody's obliged to do anything, though, or think and act in any way but how they believe they should think and act. There's plenty of variety in feminist circles as well as political ones. For example, the feminists in my family who identify as conservative are often extremely pro-life, while those who identify as liberal are often extremely pro-choice. That's just one issue out of a huge number of them, but it's a quintessentially feminist issue so it's a good one to use.

TBH, I took a moment to read up on the entire ish-show and the only thing we know for a fact is that there was a never ending barage of abusive messages from the developer to the publisher and that this Alex person is on an unhinged vendetta to harrass their ex-boyfriend with public abuse via Twitter.

Nobody with integrity could say they know. Some anonymous person wrote up some long (it had an index at the beginning) article that got published on Medium (before Medium deleted it for...um...investigating facts). A lot of accusations were made. Lot’s of petty nonsense was thrown in. Private texts/emails and public posts were put on display. A lot of anonymous sources allegeding bad behaviour without saying what the behaviour was. There was an akward private email love letter of sorts from the Judd guy that was publicized. Depending on the context, it could have been wholly inappropriate or just wholly embarrassing. Simultaneously, the fact that he dated a 24 year old adult at 36 is what’s being used to sell the idea that he is a sexual predator (which does not make any sense). The sexual harrasmant / grooming allegations mostly come from an ex-girlfriend’s (although they are an ex-they now) twitter account. Her/their posts are super abusive and hostile yet vague. Moving to $$. In either that article or forum posts responding to it (memory foggy), a whole bunch of screencapped private messages and public messages were used to claim that Dangen was witholding payments. Reality is, those private messages or dm’s or whatever they were just show accusations being made coupled with nonstop insults. Dangen claims all payments were made. Who knows? Something about an escrow bank account and issues with tax paperwork. I understand that when people are abused, toyed with, or screwed out of money, they can end up snapping and looking like they’re “crazy” while the other party acts calm, cool and collected. I’ve been there, and of course just about every woman that has been sexually assaulted has been there. That said, people decided to bring receipts, but the receipts only seem to prove their own bad behaviour.

Yes, but, I’ve personally piled on ridiculous additional complaints about people I’ve been in abusive relationships with in the past. Distraught people behave distraughtingly. They can say the guy is a space alien and that statement wouldn’t neccessarily negate that something occurred. However, stuff like that obviously calls credibility into question. So, now that this topic is spreading over news sites, journalistic integrity comes into question.

@Ghost-Piece that could be a lie told to save what face he can. it's gotten to the point where once the accusations are made, regardless of whether their true or not, are automatically regarded as being true by bandwagoners and cost people jobs or in the case of alec holowka his life

@YANDMAN i can see why you see the age gap is seen as ridiculous but theres always more to it then that. especially as she was already a legal adult.
i've already seen a 7 year relation ship between a woman in her late 40s & a guy in his late 30s go to hell. but the thing is, what really killed the relationship was the guy being a weed addict and money issues. mostly the money issues, after the break up he went back into the bad habits & unhealthy lifestyle he had prior and the last i saw of him he was being beaten up by some around 10 year old girls in park before the off duty cop i called over shooed away the girls & dragged him off to the hospital.
on the other hand i know a 65 year old woman who got married to a 20 year old when she was 33 & they where together til he died at 50, smiling because he died in the arms of the one he truly loved.
you can't write off a relationship between TWO ADULTS just because of an age gap. you can however write it off when it's obviously not going to go anywhere good. while age & difference between experience and generation do play a part, its not the deciding factor.